Students say no to technology and recycling fee

By Todd Fuller

April 23, 2010 No Comments

It’s hard to tell what effect the Vote No campaign had on the Technology and Recycling fee, but it was evident by the results that the students didn’t want it.

The final tally for the vote was 299 to 309 for a total of 608 votes cast. On the surface, this looks like the fee was a close vote; however, according to Josh Rieken, SGA elections commissioner, a two-thirds majority was necessary for the fee to pass.

“Basically, we would have needed two yes votes for every no vote, so it really wasn’t close to passing,” Rieken said.

Too many things were wrong with the Technology and Recycling fee, according to Dillon Harp, president-elect of the SGA, and that’s why he decided to create a Facebook event page condemning it.

The page was up for about three or four days according to Harp, with the objective of alerting students to issues he and a few other student leaders saw as necessary information.

Harp’s involvement was limited to the Facebook page as he said he had little to do with any of the posters that were hanging on bulletin boards and walls all over campus. “I was made aware of it,” Harp said. “We (the person who made the posters) collaborated a little bit about it but I didn’t have the final say in it.”

Initially, Harp said that he was in favor of the fee, but that was before some of the changes and the removal of clauses protecting the students. The biggest clause removed protected the students from being hit with increases twice. The clause stipulated that if tuition is raised the fee would cease to exist and with its removal, so went Harp’s support.

After much thought and consideration Harp came to the conclusion that it was not in the best interest of the students to tax themselves for things, he feels, the university should be providing through tuition.

“Why should we be taxing ourselves for technology inside the classroom when that’s what tuition should be paying for,” Harp said.

Student forums informing students about issues and providing them with information about the fee were missing, according to Harp, but Rieken said that they decided not to do them for this fee.

“Some people said that we should have held forums, but the thing with those is usually people don’t go to them, so I don’t know how much of a difference it would have made,” Rieken said.

Harp thought otherwise. “Even if they [forums] are poorly attended, you have to at least provide that opportunity for the students,” Harp said. “Saying people aren’t coming isn’t reason to just not get out and educate them about it.”

Jerrod Huber, a senior majoring in English, didn’t vote and said that he basically depended on others not to pass it.

“If I was trying to get people to vote, I would get out and talk to them, get in the crowds where people are talking,” Huber said.

Harp feels strongly that Missouri Western State University should be addressing issues with technology to provide the best education possible. “If it’s [technology] really that bad we can justify it and take care of it the right way[tuition], instead of going through on these fees and taxing our students with all these separate individual fees, that we fee them to death.”

Harp was also worried this would have set a precedent for the students to address all issues on their own such as implementing a fee to replace desks in the classroom and other such issues.

Harp thinks that the university may have to rethink how they allocate money and said one of the biggest expenses is student labor. “I’m not saying I want to get rid of student labor or anything like that, but inside the computer labs—one of the biggest expenses they have is they spend $108,000 each year on student labor inside the computer lab,” Harp said. Harp feels that some if not all of that money could be going to provide for technology in the classrooms.